Posts in "make meaning" Category — Page 11

come alive, listen to the podcast, make meaning

Aspiring beam of light: an interview with Natalie Moser.

You know how sometimes, you see a person going through something really difficult (like cancer) and think, ‘How is she doing that without losing her shit?’

When I saw that Natalie Moser was diagnosed with cancer, I expected to see endless chemo updates and requests for prayers. Instead, I saw a woman who continued to teach yoga and make art and do the right thing, just without hair when the cancer took it. The whole thing was simultaneously a very big deal and NBD.

How. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE.

Since the new administration has taken office, Natalie has only gotten more passionate, more intense, and more inwardly gorgeous — she’s basically the living embodiment of the ‘Be the Human‘ philosophy — so I took the time to chat with her one-on-one in this interview for the That’s What She Said podcast.

We talk about her biggest gifts of the past few years, the ongoing challenges in moving toward health while living a full life, how she started to take action in her community, and how the arc of her life has prepared her for this very moment. (Hint: the arc of your life has prepared you for this very moment, too.)

Listening in to Natalie’s wisdom is like taking a long sip from a cold stream on a summer day. Enjoy!

Hugs,
K

P.S. The top 10 episodes of the That’s What She Said podcast are right here.

listen to the podcast, make meaning

Your brain is (still) an asshole.

You’re not the only one who feels as if the world is, in some way, ending, while a new one is being born. You’re not the only one who’s scared, or the only one who’s tired, or the only one who’s walking around in a daze going, ‘DEAR GOD, HOW DID I GET HERE?’ Whether that ‘here’ is in your business or your home life, in the arrangement of your basement clutter or the arrangement of your community’s politics.

You’re not the only one who sees fires burning everywhere and doesn’t know which one to put out first.

It’s important to remember that, since your brain will naturally try to convince you that you’re the only one. The only one who’s scared. The only one who’s having a tough time. The only one who wants to sink into despair. The only one who’s overwhelmed. The only one who’s struggling to find a new normal. The only one who cries as you watch the news or scroll through your Facebook feed.

YOU. ARE. NOT. ALONE.

In today’s episode of That’s What She Said, we dismantle some of the sneakier ways your brain is an asshole. Instead of calling you stupid or saying you’re a failure, your brain will provide a nearly endless loop of reasons you can’t _______________, then do its best to keep you from meeting other humans who will prove your asshole brain wrong.

Keeping you in the dark, feeling as if you’re all alone, is your asshole brain’s ultimate goal. Let’s prevent it from winning, shall we?

P.S. Another classic asshole brain line: “But what if no one wants it?“

make meaning, rebel!

How to use your dollars to shape the world.

You have tremendous power.

You spend money every single day, and where you spend that money matters tremendously.

Your dollars can be spent to make giant corporations even larger, or they can be used to keep currency in circulation locally, to keep people who safeguard our democracy (i.e. journalists) working, and to keep artists, makers, thinkers, and rebels doing their respective jobs each day. (I suggest the latter.)

Here are quick and effective ways to use your dollars to shape our world for the better.

Subscribe to forms of media that pay journalists.

At a recent political conference I attended, subscribing to a physical newspaper was described as a political act. Pick a paper and get it delivered. If you want to overachieve, get a local and a national paper subscription.

Best of all, newspapers are delivered without a comments section. No angry trolls lurking at the bottom of the page! No clickbait waiting to draw your attention! No news about how to lose 15 pounds using that one secret trick!

Subscribe to media forms that are not owned or influenced by major corporations.

There used to be 10,000 franchises and companies that owned and contributed to our radio waves, TV waves, and newspapers. Now there fewer than 10.

I’m completely new to this realm and have to be honest — I only know of The Young Turks in terms of major not-funded-by-a-conglomerate-outlets. (The founder, Cenk Uyger, received a triple standing ovation at Sister Giant.) If you’re like, OOH I KNOW SOME AMAZING ALTERNATE SOURCES OF NEWS, KRISTEN — message k@kristenkalp.com and help me out.

Pick an artist — any artist — and buy their work directly from them right now.

If I had a dollar for every time someone told me they’ve enjoyed my work for months/years but have never purchased anything — but THANK YOU!!!!!!!!, they say — I could pay this month’s rent with those dividends. I am grateful for kind words, but they are absolutely useless currency for paying bills, buying food, and keeping coffee in my French press.

Pay your favorite people to keep going.

Further: if you are an artist and you don’t pay artists for their work, you’re unconsciously undermining your own. In a world where art is being driven toward free with a link of attribution for usage, all of our work descends to a far-from-sustainable-for-paying-the-bills place. Photographers, writers, poets, makers, illustrators, designers, tinkerers…pay for every piece of art you enjoy and/or use and your own work can only shine brighter.

Give money to those who inspire you.

When humans make work that inspires you and you pay them, they can keep making work that inspires you, and on and on the cycle goes. Donate to a nonprofit that’s kicking ass at the moment. Pick up a book that will change your life or reframe the way you do business (or both — Calling to the Deep!). Buy a full album from your nearest record store instead of a single from iTunes. Support projects via Patreon. Chip in to pay for intellectual food.

Elevate the voices of those thinkers, talents, speakers, writers, and artists you love.

Share your art purchases with a link and a hearty recommendation via any social media platform you choose.

Spreading the word about what you listen to, what you read, what keeps you sane, and what keeps you laughing is of vital importance. As the media comes under more and more fire — as these uncertain days get longer and darker and heavier — we will need to uplift one another with our words and our dollars more than ever.

Right now: put your money where your heart is. Pick five people who’ve inspired you and find a way to give them money.

If for some crazy reason they’re not taking money and have absolutely nothing for sale, e-mail them to ask to make a donation to charity in their name. (No seriously, do this right now.)

This week, I: bought a tote and pin from Emily McDowell, subscribed to James Victore’s Patreon, purchased 2 books — Men Explain Things to Me and Corruption in America, stopped by The High Point Cafe, which was donating 5% of its proceeds to the ACLU for the day, and went to see a movie at my local nonprofit movie house.

Those aren’t big giant dollar-sucking commitments. Those are everyday purchases totaling less than $60 that I spent to support makers and non-profits and people who make me laugh really hard.

I found that $60 for supporting the arts easily by popping into Sarah Von Bargen’s Put Your Money Where Your Happy Is course — which caused me to renegotiate billing on several fronts and save $650 per month on expenditures. YUP, that’s a $147 class that paid for itself four times over in the first month of use. Check it out here.

If I’m one of the people who have inspired you in some way, please pick up one of my books or come to the Brave workshop this September. I can’t keep making without your support — and you can’t keep making without the support of others.

We need one another.

These words are part of a longer That’s What She Said podcast, too! Listen in…

P.S. Again, this class helped me save $650 per month — so put your money where your happy is, please.

deal with depression, make meaning

The tender-hearted guide to making big, big change

Sometimes big change comes upon you slowly, like one song fading into the air while another fades out, and sometimes it comes collapsing down on you like an ancient tower crumbling in a windstorm. Whether a slow unfolding or a sudden event, big change means big emotions, and big emotions often mean turmoil of some kind.

This, then, is the tender-hearted guide to making big, big change. How do you deal with the turmoil of watching what you’ve loved/built/created/worked on/adored crumble? How do you sort through the pieces for the good/interesting/worthwhile bits without scrapping everything? How do you stop yourself from saying ALL OF IT WAS A WASTE and then taking up your vice of choice?

First: grieve.

This is the hardest and most essential element of the death of any project, life choice, or season: the grieving.

You’ll naturally want to run into the next thing. You’ll naturally want to blink back the tears and push down the pain and ignore what feels like tiny elves bashing at your eyeballs from the inside out, demanding that you cry in all the everyday places you normally frequent. (See: pharmacy, diner, bank, sidewalk, car, bathroom, bed.)

When a season ends, it’s okay to cry.

That sounds so obvious and trite and even condescending until it’s actually happening to you — until you’re actually looking back at the landscape of your life’s choices and mourning all those pieces that no longer fit.

Grieving hurts. By definition. There’s no avoiding it. The good news is, the less you fight it, the faster it will pass. When you let yourself fall apart over breakfast and in the car and in your partner’s arms and while eating bruschetta at the local Italian restaurant (SO NOT SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE HERE WHAT GIVES YOU THAT IDEA), you’re making space for the next thing.

You’re acknowledging the charred ruins of what you thought could last forever, and you’re hunting the tiny, glowing embers that will carry you into the next phase of your existence.

That’s brutally painful, because for every glowing ember, you’ll find something you didn’t think you could handle losing. (In non-metaphorical terms: you can spend seven years building a business one way, only to step away and stand still as you let the whole thing crumple. You built a whole skyscraper from your heart, and what remains is so small it clanks around in a carry-on-sized suitcase.)

The suitcase will serve you. It’s best to travel lightly.

When you’ve got your pieces…

Focus on the next step.

Just the one. You’ll want to make a 23-pronged plan and scale your ambitions or nudges of intuition with graphs and charts and scales and…no. Don’t.

The one step in front of you is generally quite simple.

You’ll take more breaks.
You’ll ask for the sale more often.
You’ll cut back on the products you offer.
You’ll introduce a new service.
You’ll enroll in a class.

Naturally, though, you’ll scale up and make ‘cutting back on products’ equal creating three new products to celebrate the products that are going away, then add a giveaway and a sale and a hashtag and a social media plan and…it gets complicated.

Try to resist the complicating and the scaling, focusing on the one simple thing you’re meant to do next. People will step in with all sorts of (ever more complicated) advice, but it’s your job to stick to the one thing.

Finally, and most importantly: be kind to yourself.

You know how we all teach what we need to learn? Yah, this is when I write directly to myself (but you can watch!). Patience is not only a virtue, but a necessity, as you choose kindness over and over again.

When you flog yourself for not seeing what is now so obvious.
When you shake your head at all the signs that mean you should have done this long ago.
When you consider firebombing your old self because (s)he is so, so stupid.
When you’re crying for the fifth time in three hours about what appears to be nothing,
or hiding from the world unshowered for the second day (read: week) in a row,
or scrolling through screens instead of doing anything that truly feeds you,
or berating yourself for all the ways you just. Aren’t. Enough.

Choose kindness.

Let your shoulders stop eating your ears and breathe into your heart and practice the difficult art of forgiving yourself. (I know, right? I scoffed when a friend told me, too.) Forgiving yourself is one of the most powerful arts you can practice in everyday life, and it means you’ll survive this latest change with something like grace and aplomb.

Seasons end, and what you thought was a sure thing turns out to be…not the surest thing anymore, and this is part of being human. You grow, you change, you shift, and you respond accordingly.

May you be brave enough to make the changes as they come, and may you know the relief and joy on the other side of watching your own work fall to the ground.

Hugs,
K

P.S. I totally read this to you in the latest episode of That’s What She Said.

embrace your Quiet nature, make meaning

What do you want to want?

We’re weaving through traffic, past abandoned warehouses, filthy streets, and barbed wire fences that are guarding graveyards, seeing all Philly’s least savory bits in quick succession. We bang a left and it appears: the building where I got Hermione D. Granger 5-ish years ago.

We’ve come to the shelter to adopt a kitten. SURPRISE!

I prop up a smile and grab his hand. I wander into the facility and fight tears. I’m not ready for another cat, even though this is a lovely and thoughtful holiday surprise. I’m not ready to commit to caring for another living thing, no matter how darling or charming or in need of a home that creature might be at the moment. My bandwidth currently holds a giant ghostwriting project, my own smaller writing projects, a host of personal issues, a boyfriend, one cat, one dog, and one flourishing houseplant.

I want to want it.

I want to want to walk through the aisles and choose a little fluff ball to bring home and love forever.

I want to want another animal to take the place of Big Kitty, who passed on a few weeks ago.

But I most definitely don’t want it.

I look into his eyes and ask to leave without looking at puppies (because who can stand the torture of all those sweet homeless faces, and I DEFINITELY ALWAYS want another puppy but don’t have the bandwidth for that, either), and we drive home. Quietly, holding hands, a little deflated.

Turns out, there are plenty of things I want to want.

I suspect you want to want ’em, too, if you’re over the age of 25 and you have internet access and/or a business:

I want to want to be famous. But I don’t. I don’t long for an e-mail list containing hundreds of thousands of people or dream about looking into the faces of millions of my adoring fans.

I almost didn’t go on my first date with my now-love because his roommate was a Brand Camp fan and I didn’t want to go sneaking around their house with him because…weird, right? (Spoiler alert: I got over it. Best first date EVER.)

I want to want a multi-million dollar business. But I don’t. I like being me, myself, and I — the leanest business model on the planet — hiring peeps to help out as I need ’em. I don’t want the multi-million dollar business bonanza because there’s a strong possibility that with it would come a team, and people management, and the knowledge that ten or twelve or twenty or three hundred people rely on me for their paychecks. I would crumple under the pressure, feel trapped by those financial constraints, and promptly self-implode.

I want to want to sell a big-giant-scalable program that costs somewhere between two and thirty thousand dollars. But I don’t. I really get off on writing and human connection, and can’t easily find the joy of human connection in large groups of people I don’t know really well. This isn’t to say that those programs don’t work for others or that I haven’t benefited from taking part in them: simply that I want to want to host one myself. But “NOPE” is the answer, louder and clearer than ever before. Big and huge and vast are awesome pursuits, they’re just not my focus.

I want to want to own a home. But I don’t. I like calling my landlord and dumping issues in her lap without having to deal with them myself. It’s easier, it’s less stressful, it’s less costly, and it means I don’t have to learn to clean gutters or refinish floors or fix dryers or maintain heaters or handle any of those real-world, real-life Adulting issues related to home ownership.

I want to want babies. But I don’t. When women say they have baby fever or their “ovaries hurt” (don’t look oddly at me, guys, I’M QUOTING) when they hold babies, I have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. I see cooing and lovely, tiny creatures and make silly faces at them and am never, ever tempted to make one of my own. My open letter to moms is still very true.

I want to want to go to parties. But I don’t. Like most introverts, I want to hear about a party and think, OH HOLY SHIT I MUST ATTEND. But I never, ever do. I’m a fairly quiet homebody whose idea of a party is having a few people over for sparklers and a white elephant gift exchange on New Year’s Eve. We’ll fill out blank Cards Against Humanity cards if we wanna get crazy. 😉

So, reader-friend…

What do you want to want?

What do you, if you’re deep down honest with yourself, feel like you should want but not actually fucking want?

Because it’s okay. It’s okay to not want a seven-figure business, or a legion of adoring fans, or to hit X benchmark that everyone agrees is important. If it’s not important to you, it’s not actually important.

You don’t have to own a home or birth a child or have a seven-figure business or launch a giant-ass program or hire a team or book out your client roster a year in advance. You don’t have to adopt another kitten or dog or child or houseplant or to-do list task. You don’t have to answer all your e-mails in 20 minutes or 20 hours or even 20 days, if you find a creative way around it. You don’t have to start a Facebook group. You don’t have to found a community or try to develop passive income or buy fresh peonies for your table every Tuesday in order to be a decent human being.

Take a careful inventory of the shit you want to want — it’s an odd sort of painful, the wanting to want — and then say ’em out loud.

These things you don’t actually want lose their power when you call ’em out.

I don’t want a kitten. I don’t want to buy a house. I don’t want to be famous. I don’t want a multi-million dollar business or head up a team. I don’t want to birth a child. And I don’t want to go to parties. Not ever, not once, unless it’s a wedding, because that’s a damn good excuse for loving the shit out of people and getting dressed up.

I don’t want ___________ or _______________ and most especially not _____________, even though ________ says I should.

I don’t want my life to look like ____________’s or ____________’s or his or hers or my __________’s, either.

I don’t want to ______________. Or _____________.

I have never wanted _____________________.

I still don’t want __________________________. (Not even a little.)

Being clear about the desires you don’t have makes more space for the shit you really want.

I want a shelf full of books I’ve written. I want to work with people one-on-one. I want to learn to be a better stepmom/stepgirlfriend/stepawkwardtitle. I want to travel at the drop of a hat. I want to have the option of going to sleep and watching only shitty romantic comedies when the weather is grey and rainy in the middle of winter. I want to have enough time to surprise my friends at work with lunch. I want to have enough money to make a life and inspire others to do the same. I want to teach people that business at its best is a vehicle for bringing your greatest gifts to light. I want to remind everyone who reads my blog that there’s nothing wrong with you.

It’s okay to want what you want.

More importantly, today, it’s okay to not want what you don’t want.

P.S. As long as you’re getting rid of pseudo-desires, you might as well check out Konmari that doesn’t suck for your business.

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